


Arsonist's Lullabye

by VeteranKlaus



Series: Become Human [5]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: (very briefly and vague), Abusive Reginald Hargreeves, Alternate Universe - Detroit: Become Human Fusion, Alternate Universe - Future, Angst, Child Abuse, Child Experimentation, Cruelty, Gen, Human Experimentation, Hurt/Comfort, Reginald Hargreeves' A+ Parenting, Reginald is very bad in this, Suicidal Ideation, Unethical Experimentation, Violence, to Five and other androids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:15:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27093397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VeteranKlaus/pseuds/VeteranKlaus
Summary: He doesn’t even know what Reginald did to him-Five isn’t sure if he’s still human anymore.###As a sick child, Reginald treats Five himself. Years later, Five wonders if they were ever treatments or just experiments, and how much of himself is even left.
Series: Become Human [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1972444
Comments: 12
Kudos: 90





	Arsonist's Lullabye

**Author's Note:**

> This is set in the Detroit: Become Human universe, but no knowledge of that is needed to read this: just know that it’s set in late 2030’s and androids look and act like humans, are very common in every household and in public, and are become self aware and want to be treated equally.

Five isn’t allowed to leave the mansion. 

The rule has been in place for as long as he can remember, and his father won’t hear of it no matter how much he begs and pleads and argues with him. He isn’t allowed to go outside, not even into the big garden at the back of the mansion, with it’s high hedges surrounding it. Reginald never offers a reason behind this rule either; he simply isn’t allowed to go outside, and he never has.

It’s utterly boring being stuck indoors. He spends most of his time learning the layout of the mansion by heart, knows where each room is and what’s inside of it (except for the basement, he’s never allowed down there.) He explores the rooms, and makes note of which ones aren’t used, which ones he can be alone in and have some privacy, where he can hide things he doesn’t want his father finding. 

He’s not supposed to hide things from his father, but the further he gets in the mansion, deeper into the mess of old, unused rooms, the higher the probability that he won’t get caught. Even if he did, he isn’t sure Reginald would really care. His father is a busy man; too busy for him.

Not that Five really cares, either. This is how it’s been for as long as he can remember. Reginald pays him attention when he gets sick, because he gives him his own treatments, and he pays him attention when he needs to tell him not to do something. 

Like go outside.

Five doesn’t get the big deal with going outside. He can watch the television, and he can access the internet easily. None of it is restricted to him (other than any searches for his father’s name online, but nothing else) and the world isn’t in some state of peril that would have him immediately die if he went outside, so he isn’t sure why he’s not allowed out.

He would go outside himself anyway, because he doesn’t care all that much for his father’s shitty rules, but there are so many damn androids and security systems set in place around the house that it’s impossible. He can’t take any of them down, either, and if he did, it would set off alarms.

The androids might have to take orders from him, but Reginald’s orders outrank his, so telling the androids to let him out won’t work, either. And although Five is smart, and has been studying electronics for as long as he can remember - there’s hardly anything else to do in this damn house - he’s not good enough to shut down and re-programme a whole android (yet) and especially not one that has been made by his own father, rather than one that has been made and bought by the main manufacturer of androids that makes most commonplace androids around.

He reckons he could probably reprogramme one of those, but he’s never seen one in person. Reginald makes all of his own ones by himself.

He made Number One, and Number One has taken to being like Five’s shadow, whenever he’s not doing other chores that he has or whenever he’s not helping his Dad down in his workshop, or doing whatever it is he does in the basement (and why is  _ he  _ allowed down there and Five isn’t? It’s ridiculous.)

Number One is… nice. He’s one of the more socially adept androids, and therefore easier and more fun to spend time with. Number One can actually hold conversations, if a bit awkwardly, and he seems to actually make progress with human behaviours and mannerisms, unlike the other androids that all seem so cold and mechanical.

So, he isn’t overly bothered that One follows him around all the time, even if he knows it’s probably due to Reginald’s orders and he’s making sure that Five doesn’t try to go outside or into the basement, or that none of Five’s upgrades begin to malfunction.

“Have you ever played chess before?” Five asks him, lounging around in the main room downstairs. One stands stiffly near the fireplace that he just topped up, watching the flames flicker around. 

“No, I don’t think I have,” he says. 

“Do we have chess around here? I’ve read articles about it. I want to play it.”

“I could download a schematic, if you would like,” One offers. Five huffs out an irritated breath and rubs at his eyes - they’ve been irritated since his last upgrade. When the vision in his left eye began to fail, his father treated it like he’s treated every ailment he’s suffered from so far.

It just takes a while to get used to the bionic body parts, but so far, the new eye seems to be settling well.

“Is it bothering you?” One asks immediately, and Five waves him off.

“It’s fine,” he dismisses, rolling both eyes. “But I read when people used to play chess with actual boards and actual pieces. I don’t want a schematic.”

“If you were to ask Sir Hargreeves, he might be able to find an old playing set,” One suggests. “Or if he gives me permission, I could order one for you.”

“The old man wouldn’t want to be bothered to be asked about  _ chess, _ ” Five mutters, waving a hand at One. He clambers onto his feet, looks around the large room, and then back at Number One, who stares back at him with all the social tact of - well. An android who has, to Five’s knowledge, never left the premises and has only spoken to three humans in his existence.

He’s spoken to more humans than Five has, he realises. He’s probably spoken to Reginald more than he has, too.

Whatever. Five scuffs his foot over the floor and heads out of the main room. Predictably, Number One trails after him. 

“Don’t you have chores to do?” Five asks.

“Not until later,” says One. Five frowns.

“Shouldn’t you be making dinner, or something?”

“Number Three-One-Four is making dinner as we speak.”

Five grimaces. He doesn’t care much about androids, but he prefers Number One out of all of the ones in the mansion. At least Number One can talk properly, or walk properly, and looks real. 

It’s not possible to forget that he’s an android - not with that obnoxious LED on the side of his head, blinking a steady green or yellow, and not with the fact that Five’s own systems pick up on the lack of breathing, the lack of heat, the lack of a heart, and instead the electromagnetic waves and radiation he emits. But perhaps without all of that, he could be taken as a human, albeit a rather awkward and strong one.

Meanwhile, Android-314 decidedly lacks a rather… human appearance, and Five would prefer to avoid that one. Maybe, though, if he’s lucky, it’ll drip some thirium or oil or  _ something  _ into his father’s food. The old man can’t stop him from going out if he’s sick, or dead. 

“Where are we going?” Number One asks, and Five waves a hand at him.

“ _ I’m  _ going to the attic,” he states, already at one set of stairs. 

“You know Sir Hargreeves would prefer you stay out of there,” says One. 

“You know I don’t care what he thinks,” says Five. He can almost hear One sigh; a slightly exaggerated exhale.

“I know,” he agrees. 

“I’m going to the attic alone,” Five rephrases. One falters in his steps; Five doesn’t. Luckily, Number One doesn’t insist on following him, and he breaks off and heads back down the stairs and keeps going down, down into that basement where Five isn’t allowed to go. 

Five almost wonders if One did that on purpose, just to spite him, because he knows he can’t go there.

Whatever, he thinks, balling his hands into fists. Number One might have more freedom in his own house than him - might have a better relationship with his own father than him, but Five has something that One never will, and it leaves him with a small, smug smirk on his face. One might have all of that, but at least Five is human.

### 

“It works fine,” says Five, blinking up at the ceiling. Reginald scribbles down on some paper, continuing to ignore Five, as he has been for the past fifteen minutes. He’s said more words to One than he has to him. “Thanks for asking,” he adds, bitterly.

“Stop behaving so childishly, boy,” Reginald scolds, and Five rolls his eyes, holds back his grimace.

So, perhaps the eye doesn’t work  _ fine.  _ But like hell is he going to let his father have anything close to an ‘I told you so’ moment with him.

Five glares at the ceiling, but he holds back his comment about the fact that he turned eleven last week. He wonders if he even knows how old he is; he sure didn’t come down to wish him a happy birthday. Number One did, at least.

Whilst Five might usually bristle at being called childish, or anything of the sort, he lets it pass this time. He is a child, but he’s also smarter than a human kid his age. He’s willing to bet he’s smarter than half of the stupid androids Reginald’s made and has tottering around the place. He’s willing to bet he’s smarter than Reginald himself. If he just had the resources he did, he would have outshone him by the time he was nine.

“Number Five,” his father says, and he exhales a breath he didn’t realise he was holding and forces himself to relax. The irritating beeping of the machine hooked up to him quietens a little. Reginald scrolls through the screens of information around him, makes a noise somewhere between disappointment and irritation, and then orders Number One to get the anaesthesia ready. 

He’s used to this procedure. Hell, he’s probably seen the damn anaesthesia more than he’s seen his father, he thinks, although they typically come as a damn pair. 

One offers what Five thinks is probably an attempt at a reassuring smile (he’s not nervous anyway) and slips the mask over his face.

Five breathes in and wills his eyes to stay open as his body relaxes. He breathes in again, and the eye that isn’t mechanical slips shut. 

Idly, he hopes he gets a cake for his twelfth birthday.

### 

Number One is, of course, the one that helps him recover. Reginald stopped watching the recovery process by the time he was four, after all.

Plus, these days it’s less of a recovery process and more of a simple adjustment. There’s no real recovery to be had - and that’s the whole point of the treatments. They fix what’s wrong with him, and working with mechanics is simply different. His body isn’t healing anything; what was wrong is simply gone; replaced with something better.

But he needs to adjust nonetheless. The new eye works better than the last one, and he was already used to the mechanical eye.

The lungs, however, are a different story.

He didn’t even tell Reginald he had a growing cough, or pain in his chest. Hell, he didn’t even tell any of his stupid androids - he knew they would just go and tell him, after all. One of them must have noticed it, though, or perhaps Reginald noticed it himself while he was fixing his eye. 

Either way, he hadn’t thought it warranted a transplant, but apparently it had. Reginald might be an - odd man, but he was safe. He wouldn’t do any of the treatments he has done without a reason; just to do it. 

It takes a couple of weeks to get used to it, to the new sensation of breathing, to the new notifications he receives, the new ability to see his own oxygen levels, respiratory rate, lung power, and the cleanliness of air, although he hardly has to worry about the latter; inside the mansion, the air is filtered and clean in every room, and he can only guess what it might be like outside. 

Sitting by one of the large windows in the attic, Five lets his gaze run out among the city. He could see for miles if he wanted, if he closed his right eye and just used the left. He could enhance everything, could see each crack in each brick of each building, if he chose to.

He doesn’t. 

He watches cars drive by on the roads, and he runs his hand down his chest where there’s no scar on his skin. 

### 

He doesn’t get a cake for his twelfth birthday. Not that he’s ever had a real one, but at least until then, Number One went out of his way to make sure cupcakes were always on the grocery list, or some other kind of treat for Five. Not this year.

Not that it matters. He couldn’t eat it even if they got him one. Five throws up after one meal, and the next day Reginald takes him into the infirmary, and when he wakes up, he has no need to eat. The majority of his digestive system has either been altered or replaced entirely, and until Reginald can make his body self-sufficient, then he receives nutrients every other day. Of course, it’s Number One who helps him with this, and not his own father.

### 

“Why can’t I go outside?” Five asks, placing his pawn on the centre of a new square. He already knows the answer he’ll get to this question - it’ll be the same he’s received for the past however-many-years he’s been asking - but he asks nonetheless. 

“Sir Hargreeves has decided that it is unsafe for you to do so,” Number One says, staring at the chessboard for a moment longer before moving one of his own pieces. Five makes his next move and claims the piece as his own. Number One blinks at him. “You’re getting good at this,” he comments. Five shrugs.

The game is easy to play when he can already tell the majority of outcomes and game plans and how to retaliate to each of One’s moves. It’s almost boring, now. He misses when it was more challenging. 

Five moves his next piece, watching Number One’s face and asks, “safe for who?”

### 

Number One looks odd like this, he thinks.

While in stasis, the android-equivalent to sleep, and recharging - he looks so strangely vulnerable. He’s sat on the bench just by the front door, and the LED on the side of his head spins a gentle, calm blue, and his eyes are closed. 

With silent footsteps, Five backs away from him. He hardly gets any time where all the androids in the house are asleep - there’s always one awake, but Number One is his main worry. He’s basically assigned to Five at this point, and he’d be the hardest one for him to dodge. Five’s sure that’s why Reginald programmes his stasis at different times every other night, just to keep Five from doing things he shouldn’t, but - Dad should have thought that Five would eventually figure it out, especially when he hardly needs much sleep these nights anyway. 

He has precious time tonight to use One’s stasis to do something he shouldn’t, and it makes him conflicted. There are only really two things he wants to do, and he knows he won’t be able to do both in one night, but he isn’t sure when the next night might be where he gets this chance again, and he wants to make good use of it.

Outside, or the basement.

Outside is more tempting, but he’s sure there are more security measures in place to alert someone if he goes outside, and he’s not sure how long he’ll be out for if he manages to get out. He’ll have to plan better if he wants to do that.

So, the basement it is.

He’s not sure if it’s more out of spite or curiosity that he silently descends the staircase. If Reginald had just told him what was down there by now, rather than so strictly forbid him from going there, he wouldn’t even care. If it’s simply some workshop, he’s going to be disappointed. 

But, Reginald has been so strict with making sure he doesn’t go down there, so that must mean there is something bad down there, and that makes Five curious. 

He goes down, and he picks the three locks on the door, and he nudges it open, cringing when it groans.

There are more stairs leading down into darkness, but night vision fixes that easily enough, and he heads down without hesitation. The stairs lead off into a cold, tight corridor, all exposed stone and brick that hasn’t been cared for. There’s a drift. He keeps walking.

It turns a corner, and that’s when things change. Instead of stone walls either side of him, there are bars; bars to cells. And in the dark cells, there are shapes. Inhuman shapes, piles of things, shuffling and clicking and groaning and hissing lumps of things. Dull eyes blink at him, and a few metallic arms thrust out between the bars, waving at him, but he stays out of their reach.

It takes Five a minute to realise that these are androids.

They must be failed ones; broken ones. Ones that are degrading, ones that just didn’t work out together, ones that - 

God, they look horrible. All broken, twisted limbs, missing limbs, missing random body parts, or only being half a body at all. Some have skin, some are purely metallic, some barely more than frames. Some don’t look at him, frozen in place while others pace in tight circles again and again and again. Some are slumped, LED’s off, deactivated and nothing more than a metal corpse. 

Five freezes on the spot, and it takes him a while to be able to move again.

There’s - so many of them. It takes him by surprise, their physical states, and the way some of them hiss and yell, how some of them look defeated and hollow, how some look terrified. 

He wonders how long they’ve been down here for. How long they’ve been stuck in these cells, sentient enough to be aware of their situation and to suffer, but unable to do anything about it. 

Sheltered as he may be, Five knows there is a debate on androids and just how  _ alive  _ they really are. Five couldn’t care less about it, though; whether or not they perceive and feel things the same humans do. He knows, in the end, that they are still sentient. Still self-aware. Whether or not it’s the same as humans, it’s still a life form, of some sort, and a very intelligent one at that.

And this - 

This is torture. This is inhumane.

Then a hand rests on his shoulder. Five jumps around, and there’s Number One.

“Don’t,” he says, and for the first time in a long time - the first time in perhaps forever - he feels a noticeable flicker of -  _ something.  _ Apprehension, maybe. Fear. Dread.

Number One frowns, but he doesn’t take his hand off him. Five knows it’s inevitable, and it’s useless to try and win this over, and it’s not Number One’s fault he’s been programmed like this, but he still tries.

“I’m sorry,” says One, and he really sounds and looks like he means it. Nonetheless, he still takes him to Reginald’s office. 

It’s not entirely a shock that Five finds himself in the infirmary ten minutes later, with Number One frowning and slipping a mask over his face.

### 

Five isn’t sure he recognises himself anymore.

The thought doesn’t startle him, really (nothing startles him anymore) but it does come unprovoked, and it seems a little irrational. He’s not changed visibly. He knows what he looks like. 

But he  _ feels  _ like a different person. And maybe, in some way, he is. He isn’t sure how much is left of him anymore, and how much of it has been replaced with metal and wiring. He knows his right eye is still very much the same one he’s had since birth. He knows he still has his heart. His hands are made of bone, and so is his jaw, and his nose hasn’t been touched. His hair is his own. He has ribs, he thinks, but Reginald probably had to have done something with at least some of them to reach his lungs, so maybe not. 

Technology has advanced a lot. He knows this. And he knows that he was, once, a pretty sickly person, and the treatment Reginald gave him that included something mechanical has saved his life, and he’s sure such treatments have saved hundreds of thousands of lives out in the real world, as well.

But there has to come a point where there’s too much, right? 

He’s used to it, and he’s sure he wouldn’t care if it didn’t get this excessive, if he didn’t know the truth to it. But it’s gone too far, and he knows the truth. 

He’s the only human to have this much of him replaced or altered with technology. Of course he is. The general public is afraid of technology, and it would be deemed unethical to turn a human into whatever Five is, and no one would allow it. No one would even think of doing something, unless they were as insane as Reginald is. Plus, the added anxiety with androids at the moment, and the debate on just how  _ human  _ they are - it makes people unsettled. No one wants to receive any medical care with technology, lest it blur the line between human and android. 

Such ‘treatment’ that Five has received hasn’t come to the general public. No one else has received anything like what he has, let alone to the extent that he has. It isn’t as normal as he had thought it was a few months ago.

It’s purely what Reginald did to him, and why Reginald kept him hidden inside. After a point, he couldn’t hide it, and now, Five isn’t sure he can hide it himself. 

Maybe at some point it was treatment. Maybe at some point it was to help him. But somewhere along the line, it must have turned to morbid curiosity, and even punishment, and - 

There was nothing wrong with his head. There was nothing wrong with his head, but he woke up and now things are just  _ different.  _ So different, and he doesn’t really know how to wrap his head around the way he perceives things now. He doesn’t even know what Reginald  _ did  _ to him-

Five isn’t sure if he’s still human anymore. 

He lives day to day too easily. Everything is too perfect. He picks up on any and everything too well, too quickly; reacts too quickly, too precisely; can see the probability of each situation, can analyse people and his surroundings, can see and hear and feel too much, and yet he also feels nothing. His senses are too enhanced, and his emotions feel numbed, and he doesn’t feel human. 

Reginald doesn’t pay him any more attention than usual, except for perhaps the week after his latest experiment to see whether or not Five will end up dying because of this. Five wonders if he’s gotten bored of him now. What else is there to change about him now? What’s left for him to experiment on?

### 

Although he can’t really feel amusement, he thinks it’s kind of funny.

He saw what Reginald did to those androids in the basement, and as punishment, Reginald tried to take away the last of his humanity and stuffed him in there as well.

He’s in one of the cells right to the back. Reginald never comes down here, but just in case, best put Five to the back so he doesn’t have to see him if he ever decides to pay a visit to the other poor things down here. 

There’s only one android in here with him, and it’s long dead. Dust covers it and it’s LED is blank, and the rest of the cell is untouched. It’s probably been dead for years. 

At least it can’t bother Five. He can sit in peace, undisturbed, and have some space to himself to pace or lay down or stretch or pace and pace and pace because there’s nothing to do down here except for listen to the other androids pace and pace and pace-

He stays down there for eighteen days before he makes a decision. It doesn’t do much to help the numbness that’s become him for a while now, but it satisfies him, reassures him. He knows he’s not going to spend much longer down here. He knows what’ll happen to Reginald, too, and it satisfies a darker part in the back of his head. 

Number One comes down every three days. He spends time with Five. He acts odd now; has done ever since he found Five in the basement for the first time. Five thinks he might feel guilty. He comes down, though, and those twenty minutes every three days help keep him a little sane down here, even if sometimes One’s attention drifts to the metal corpse in his cell, and a pained look takes over his face.

Just like now. One wanders down the hallway, comes to a stop in front of his cell, and glances at the metal body. He frowns, his eyes turning sad, and then he watches Five leap to his feet.

“What is it?” He asks. 

“I need you to let me out of here,” Five says. One’s shoulders tense. 

“I can’t do that, Five,” he says, looking down in shame. It was worth a try.

“If you don’t let me out, I’ll let myself out,” he states. One’s hands ball into fists.

“I can’t let you do that, Five.”

“If you stop me, I’ll kill myself,” he says. In the eighteen days he’s been here, Five has come up with a plan and two outcomes. Either he gets out, or he kills himself. If he doesn’t get out now, he doubts he’ll ever get out, and he isn’t willing to see how long he can survive down here before he either dies or goes insane. 

“Five - please-”

“Let me out,” Five repeats, and his voice is hard. He doesn’t blame One for having to report him to Reginald when he had no other choice, but now Five has no other choice, and he knows that if One intends to keep him in this cell, he won’t get out. He can’t overpower One, he can’t shut him down, he can’t fight him, and if he slips past him only to get caught, then he knows he simply won’t get back out. 

“I’m give you a choice here, Number One,” he says, curling his hands around the bars. “Either you let me out, or you can watch me die.”

He and Five can’t be that different. At least physically. And despite being born human, Five isn’t sure which one of them might be deemed as more human or more android. With the way One looks at that dead android in his cell, with the pure conflict written all over his face, Five thinks he might feel more than he does.

“I can’t do that, Five,” he says. Five glares at him.

“Yes you can, idiot. Make a damn choice, One. You’ve helped him lock me in this damn mansion my whole life, you’ve helped him make me this thing I am now - it’s time you think for yourself, One. Make a damn choice for yourself,” he hisses, face pressed against the bars. For what Five thinks is the first time ever, One’s LED spins a rapid red, bathing the hallway in a distressed light. 

“Five-”

“Are you your own person, One?” Five asks. “Or are you just another machine that Reginald made to play with? What makes you different from me? Different from  _ him _ ?” His finger points at the dead android slumped against the wall, and One’s LED flashes even faster. “Who - what are you, One-”

“My name is Luther,” he blurts, and Five closes his mouth; raises an eyebrow. “My name is Luther,” he echoes. 

Quieter now, Five says, “Luther, let me out.”

Silence stretches out between them. Luther looks between Five, the dead android, and the direction of the basement stairs, again and again and again. And then he unlocks the cell door, and Five steps out.

Five opens all the other cell doors. 

He and Luther run.

The androids that Reginald had failed and tested on and locked up flood up the stairs, running or stumbling or crawling or dragging themselves up, and they hardly even blink at Five and Luther. They spread throughout the mansion, heading in an angry, hurt horde in the direction of Reginald’s room, taking the place apart as they go. The old stairs groan under the android’s weight, and they pull apart the banisters, splinter all the wood, tear at the wallpaper, pull down portraits and paintings. Flickering candles fall over, and flames dance and grow further and further. 

Luther opens the front doors. 

Fresh air greets Five’s skin. It runs through his hair like fingers as he and Luther run down the driveway, stones digging into the soles of his feet, a sensation that almost shocks him to the core. 

At the gates, they turn and look back.

He can see, through the open doors and some windows, the flames that are spreading throughout the house; still small, but Five reckons the whole place will be up in flames within ten minutes. He hopes that the androids get out. 

He turns to Luther, standing tall and shocked and conflicted, and he grabs his wrist. “We need to go,” he says. Luther spares one last look at the mansion, and then he nods at Five, and they turn around. 

Five listens to the gentle crackle of fire as they head down the street; feels the cold pavement beneath his feet for the first time. Satisfaction trickles through him.

He had always thought it would feel incredible to go outside. To get away from Reginald. If only he had managed to do so a month or so ago, before his father managed to dig his fingers into the last of Five and tear it apart. The jab of stones in the soles of his feet feel more intense than the numbed sense of exhilaration that echoes in his chest. 

**Author's Note:**

> Didn't expect Five's to end up being this long, but hey. Poor guy has had a Ride.
> 
> Thank you for reading! More still to come to this series. I have Ben and Vanya's oneshots planned, but if there are extra characters that you'd like to see (Lila, Dave, Raymond, Sissy, etc) feel free to let me know, although I may have some thoughts for some of them as well already.


End file.
